Once in a while, I need to pause and reflect. Really, we all need to, don't you think? Review the highs and lows of our life, see where we've been and where we're going. It was a habit to take a regular, decisive mental inventory when I was in college, believing that an unexamined life was not one worth living.
Even with the habit of examining myself, I never really figured out where I was going. I count myself lucky to like my life, but I didn't get here because I had a plan. A history major because that allowed me to graduate with the least amount of required courses, I've never been one to try to work in my major. I took graduate courses based upon the requirements of a job and I've taken jobs based upon the requirements of my life. Nothing decided, everything happenstance. Most serendipitiously wonderful. Or beautifully designed by my Loving Maker.
The Examined Life was a semester by semester process, whereby I would re-evaluate myself, taking daylong retreats to seek God for my future. If I am to be truly honest, those times did little for me to figure out where I was going, but more to figure out who I am/was/am meant to be. I would learn about God and his truths, but rarely heard about what I needed to do.
I am now entering a time of reflection again. Although my current life does not allow daylong retreats by rivers or lakes. Reflection now is a process, a submission process much unlike anything I've ever experienced. I've been humiliated when I won't be humbled. I've been disciplined and lovingly restored. Not restored to my former position, but restored to my first love, which is a better result. I'm learning about how to be contrite while not remaining humiliated, which is a tricky feat. And truly, I'm learning that each day must be laid before the Throne of Grace as an offering for any progress to be made.
It is so easy to push the trying trials aside, to not succumb to the painful process of transforming. I fight it tooth and nail. But somehow being angry and honest make the going easier; it's a hard tightrope to walk, but one I'm attempting. Be angry and sin not. Be humble but not humiliated. Be contrite but not prostrate.
Let the redeemed of the Lord say so. I believe I am not stuck. I believe that I can overcome. I believe that this life looks not one iota like what I thought it would. And I believe that I will not be cut off from the everyloving Jesus who takes care of me, even though I fall and flounder.
I'm attending my own trials. I am being tried. And these trying trials are forcing me to find out who I am. Not where I'm going or what my future holds, but who I am.
